Wasps have snapped up Guy Armitage, younger brother of Toulon and England stars Delon and Steffon.

The 24-year-old centre, who has racked up 12 tries in 25 appearances for Championship outfit London Welsh this season, will move to the Ricoh next term, helping to fill the gap left by Siale Piutau’s departure after his short-term stint.

“He has been one of the stand-out performers in the Championship this season and I’ve been impressed not only by his try-scoring ability but also his physicality in attack and defence. Watching some of Guy’s games you can see he has a real hunger to get involved and is able to create chances as well as finish them.

“We need competition for places and real strength in depth across the squad, although there’s versatility in the players we have which is excellent.

“We want to be a top six side on a consistent basis and we can’t say that at the moment because we’ve only been there once in the last eight years.

“To achieve that we need continuity and consistency in our squad. If you look at all the successful sporting organisations the turnover of players is about ten per cent, which in a squad of 40 players means four.

We’re having 12 or 15 out and in every year, which means we’re replacing around a third of the squad.

“We want to try and get to a situation like Saracens in the last couple of years, where only two or three players have changed.

That’s important for the next couple of seasons, and by bringing in younger guys, like Marty Moore and Tommy Taylor, you hope they will be with you for five or six years.

“The average Premiership squad is about 43 players. Exeter have more, whereas Bath have a few less, but that’s about the average number.

“You’ve got to look at how many internationals you’re going to lose, as next year it will be nine games including autumn internationals and the Six Nations.

Guy Armitage

“You need at least two really quality players in every position, as that helps you get the best out of them.

“In certain positions you need a few more, but you also have to be mindful that it is not possible to keep too many top players happy. If you had four international tight heads or scrum halves, for instance, they wouldn’t all get to play enough.

“So you need three hookers, scrum halves and fly halves and four tight heads because it’s such an attritional position, and you need two for every match.

“The perfect situation is what we have at scrum half, where we have two No.1’s rather than a No.1 and a No.2. We had three quality No.10’s last year but Ruaridh Jackson was injured for the whole season.”

Armitage, an England under-20 international who has also played for London Irish, London Scottish and Toulon, is 6ft 5ins tall and over 17½ stone.

“It’s great to be joining a very talented group of players and coaching staff at Wasps,” he said. “I’ll be meeting up with quite a few of my England age group squad – Elliot Daly, Christian Wade, Dan Robson, Sam Jones and Joe Launchbury – so it will be nice to have some familiar faces.

“Dai Young shows great confidence in his squad and you can see the players have bought into his plan and excelled. For sure, it’s an exciting new challenge for me and I feel I am ready. I would like to thank London Welsh for the opportunity they have given me to get so much game time. I’ve really enjoyed playing with a fine group and will be wishing them all the best for next season.”